Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - RFK JR EXCLUSIVE: Biden Unfit To Serve, Dem Party Nomination, New Vanity Fair Allegations
Episode Date: July 2, 2024Saagar is joined by RFK JR to discuss Biden's debate collapse, if he is fit to serve, would he accept the Dem nomination, new allegations from Vanity Fair, and MORE! To become a Breaking Points Pre...mium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app,
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Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids,
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transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.
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that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week
early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.
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Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.
I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community.
I was calling about the murder of my husband.
The murderer is still out there.
Each week, I investigate a new case.
If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.
Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking
of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys
the best independent coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Joining me now is independent presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.
And it is a pleasure to have him back on the show.
It's great to see you, sir.
Sagar, thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So, you know, we watched your real debate.
It was garnered views by millions of people.
We have some video from that, actually.
And we wanted to talk to you a little bit about your decision to participate and to hold this event,
which happened outside of the mainstream media system,
which consequently was still watched by millions,
and what it was like to be excluded then from
the CNN debate, and why you decided to throw that independent event.
Well, you know, 71% of the American people wanted me on that debate stage, and I qualified for the
debate by the criteria. I qualified better than any other candidate, let me put it that way, by the criteria that CNN established.
We think that that debate was an illegal campaign contribution by CNN to those two candidates.
I don't know if the FEC will hold them responsible or not since it's dominated by those two parties.
But we thought Americans deserve another choice and a view of the issues
that really should be talked about,
the issues that these two candidates
will never talk about.
The division in our country,
which is tearing our country apart,
which they can't address because they're feeding on it and they're products of it.
It's a huge budget deficit that the two of them,
$34 trillion that is now threatening its existential threat for our country within five years,
50 cents out of every dollar that we collect in taxes is going to go to
servicing the dead within 10 years, 100%. And these two candidates can't talk about it because both of
them promised to balance the budget and both of them ran up the biggest deficits in history.
They can't talk about winding down the wars because both of them are feeding into them.
They can't talk about the chronic disease epidemic,
which is now absorbing five times our military budget
and has affected 60% of our kids.
We're the sickest country in the world,
and they presided over it.
So they can't talk about ending the corrupt merger
of state and corporate power
because both of them are part of the swamp
and they can't talk about making government honest again.
And I said this during the debate
that the day I get into office,
I'm going to issue an executive order
that any federal official who lies to the American people will immediately lose their job.
President Biden and President Trump can't do that.
They were both up there telling lies.
So I thought the Americans deserved something other than the debate they were going to get from CNN. And by the way, CNN during COVID,
which was the most momentous and consequential political decision
over the past many decades,
the lockdowns that shut down all of our businesses,
shut down our schools, et cetera,
CNN was the biggest cheerleader for that.
So I don't think Jake Tapper is really capable of
confronting these candidates on the terrible consequences that those decisions had on the
American public. Bobby, one of the things that we do, I mean, I appreciate and obviously we
genuinely wanted you to be on the debate stage, which we said in our coverage as well. I do think
it was a very consequential decision to exclude you given the fallout from
that. I'm curious to get your reaction to President Biden's performance. I mean,
do you think that he's currently fit to serve as president after the performance that he gave?
I don't think he's fit to serve as president. I think, you know, the thing that frightens me, Sager, is if we are in a situation where he gets that call at 3 o'clock in the morning and he's woken up,
he's got six minutes to make the decision about whether to retaliate and to unleash our nuclear power on the Russians, the Chinese. During that six minutes, he's being pushed down corridors and tunnels
onto the White House at the bunker
by five or six Secret Service men.
And I just, I don't feel, you know,
he's got to make a decision
that's going to affect the lives of our children,
that's going to affect the welfare of all of humanity.
Right.
And I want somebody who's on the ball
making that decision.
I don't know. You know, even I'll say this, Sager, I don't want to make this personal about me,
but I've known Joe Biden for 40 years and he's just a completely different person now.
And even this little decision of him not providing me with secret service protection
i don't think that joe biden i knew would do that i don't believe he's making that decision
i believe he probably doesn't even know about it because i think he seems unaware
and i know that you know joe biden has a has, my father, sitting behind him at the Oval Office.
He knows what happened to my dad. And he was the person I knew that Joe Biden, I knew was a decent
man. He would not make this kind of decision. So what I think is there's somebody sitting there, some kid in a lanyard, some
anonymous man in a lanyard, who's sitting with his feet up on the desk of the Oval Office saying,
I'm the real president. Nobody knows about it. But there's somebody else. I just believe that
there's somebody else making these decisions because I think that Joe Biden, I know,
would not be making that kind of decision.
And I can name a whole bunch of them.
Right.
Well, but since you were the highest polling Democrat
in the race other than Joe Biden
before you decided to run as an independent,
have any Democrats or major donors
reached out to you to ask you
to become the standard bearer and replace him?
We haven't heard from anybody yet.
I'm sure they're looking at polls.
And, you know, the polls we did, the Zogby poll, which is the biggest poll ever taken in this race, one of the biggest polls ever taken, 26,000 people. So the typical poll sayer has about, by Quinnipiac or Harvard Harris or Gallup,
has 1,000 to 2,200 people in it.
This was a poll of 26,000,
and it shows clearly that I'm the only person
who can beat Donald Trump, including President Biden.
If I'm in the race, President Biden loses.
If I'm out of the race, he loses even worse.
But in a head-to-head, me against Donald Trump, I win.
In a head-to-head, me against President Biden, I win in a landslide.
I win 39 states.
He only wins 11.
My numbers, I'm the only candidate who can cut into Donald Trump's base. And if they want to, if the objective, which I think is true, there's two parts of the
Democratic Party.
There's the donor class, which I think would like to keep me out of the, would rather have
Donald Trump than me in office.
And then there's the rank and file Democrats who are so terrified of Donald Trump that
they would much rather have me as their candidate because I'm the only one who can win.
Is it something you would even consider, Bobby, at this point?
You've run as an independent.
You've picked your vice president.
Would you even consider running for the nomination at the DNC if they were offered to?
I think that because me running as an independent is going to cut away from votes for the Democratic and Republican parties.
So the clearest path for me to the White House is through the Democratic Party.
I don't have to do that, but I think that would be probably the best choice for everybody, and it's certainly something that I would consider. Well, I'm curious to then find out, because one of the things that you're often accused of is being
a MAGA sympathizer or some sort of agent for Donald Trump. What did you disagree with about
Trump most on the debate stage? Well, you know, I think Donald Trump was a terrible president.
I think a lot of the things he talks about,
he talks about winding down the military-industrial complex,
but he didn't do that.
He gave the first billion and a half to Ukraine,
or Dubai for the first time, offensive weapons.
He was the one who sent Pompeo over there in 2019 and said,
you know, we're going to extend NATO into Ukraine.
And he walked away from an intermediate nuclear weapons treaty
unilaterally with the Russians.
And if you look at the way he governed,
he said he was going to drain the swamp.
He brought a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist in to run HHS.
He brought an oil lobbyist in to run the Interior Department.
He brought a coal lobbyist in to run EPA.
He brought a Verizon executive in to run the FCC.
He brought a banker in to run the Treasury Department. And so, you know, and he brought John Bolton in to run the NSA,
and he brought an oil executive in to run the State Department.
So these are swamp creatures.
He wasn't training the swamp.
He was turning the government over to corporate pirates.
And so everything he did in governing in that way, I think a lot of the
rhetoric that he talks about, I agree with. I think we need to wind down the swamp. But he
wasn't doing that. I don't think he's capable of governing, of meeting the expectations and
fulfilling the promises that he raises with his rhetoric.
Returning then to the possibility of running as a Democrat, do you still think that,
well, I mean, one of the criticisms I've seen is that you're too far apart from
the Democratic Party. Do you think that you're in line with the majority of Democrats
on several of these issues? I think that I am the classic Democrat.
I'm a Kennedy Democrat.
If you go down a checklist
of all of the important priorities
for my father, my uncle,
I would check off everyone.
Protecting our Constitution,
protecting our Bill of Rights,
decoupling corporate control
from our regulatory agencies,
which have become sock puppets for the industries they're supposed to regulate,
winding down the war machine, using diplomacy instead of war.
All of the things, personal freedoms, medical autonomy, bodily autonomy, all the things that the Democratic
Party has traditionally represented and fought for, those are the issues that, you know,
that are my priorities.
Bobby, what did you make of the Supreme Court's decision yesterday on presidential immunity?
Is it something you agreed with or disagreed with?
I think it's horrifying, I think.
And I, you know, I'm not partisan about this.
It helped Donald Trump, but that's not what I care about. I care about the fact that we now,
you know, the executive now has this enormous power that I don't think was contemplated by
the framers of our constitution. And I think it, in the hands of Democrats or Republicans,
at some point, our country is going to land in the hands,
there's going to be a demagogue who is occupying the Oval Office.
And the tools and the weapons that the Supreme Court have now put
at that person's disposal are, they're breathtaking.
And I don't think, And I think it would be challenging for our democracy to survive in any form that we recognize.
Every power that an executive is given will ultimately be abused to the maximum extent
possible. And I think, you know, I think we
all have to contemplate what happens when you unleash executive power to that extent. And I
think it's very, very alarming. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for
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In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.
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owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually
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Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head
to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father.
Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily,
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This author writes,
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Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth
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Over the past six years
of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,
I've learned one thing.
No town is too small for murder.
I'm Katherine Townsend.
I've received hundreds of messages
from people across the country
begging for help with unsolved murders.
I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.
They've never found her.
And it haunts me to this day.
The murderer is still out there.
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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
What would your criteria be
for appointing a SCOTUS justice?
I don't believe I've seen you expound on that before.
Like, what would you look at in terms of Roe v. Wade,
let's say in terms of Chevron,
this immunity case, and others,
how would you evaluate, considering that the next president is likely to appoint at least
two Supreme Court justices to the court? Yeah, I mean, Sager, it's hard. You know,
I would really evaluate based upon character and a commitment to the Constitution.
Chevron cuts both ways. Chevron was really, you know, I spent 40 years in the trenches
fighting both, you know, suing administrative agencies and also suing large corporations.
And Chevron was an important weapon for us because it gave the regulatory agency the capacity
to fill the kind of interstitial places in the statutes
that Congress just will never answer.
And now that is gone,
and every decision by the regulatory agency can now be litigated,
which is going to enormously weaken the regulatory agencies.
Chevron was a two-edged sword because when the regulatory agency becomes captured by corporations,
it also functions to widen corporate power.
So unfortunately, I think we're in a place in American history where I'm kind of neutral on the Chevron issue
because I see the really good things
that it did in the past,
but I also see the very bad potential
that it has right now
where we're living in a situation
where our regulatory agencies
are just indentured servants
and really subsidiaries of the corporations
that they're supposed to regulate.
Returning to the campaign issue, if the Democrats do swap out Joe Biden for somebody else,
would there be a criteria? What would your decision making process be? Would you possibly
drop out of the race? Are you going to stay in this race no matter what, unless it's you?
How would you evaluate that scenario? Oh, I'm going to stay in the race, I think, you know, I mean, unless,
unless they appointed somebody who was, who shared exactly, you know, all of my
ambitions for the government for, for dismantling the... Is there anyone, not you,
that you could point to that represents somebody like that? Not among the contenders. I think we all know who the contenders are. There's six or seven people
who they could pick. And I think among those people, there is nobody that would lead me to
drop out of the race. Let's say that probably the most likely is the current vice president,
Kamala Harris. If you were up against her, what would your campaign message be as to why you're
better than Kamala Harris? I think Kamala has the same issues that President Biden has without the
cognitive issues is that she's very pro-war.
She's supported censorship.
She's supported this, you know,
this unprecedented assault on our constitution where they close all the churches
per year without regulatory process,
without scientific citation,
without, you know, public hearings
or notice and comment rulemaking
or environmental impact statements or anything.
All of the other issues,
shutting down jury trials, the Seventh Amendment,
closing 3.3 million businesses with no due process,
no just compensation.
The Constitution is critically important right now,
particularly, Sagar,
because you have the rise of all these very intrusive
surveillance technologies
like AI,
facial recognition systems,
like low-altitude satellites
that can look at every inch
of the world every day,
digital currencies,
all these things that can be used,
number one, by corporations
to maximize their profits and to commoditize us all
and commoditize everything we think or do or say to each other in every interaction,
but also they can be used by government to surveil and control the populations
and to actually with AI to alter our reality and really ultimately control our minds, I think it's really critically
important at this point in history to raise the bulwarks, the barriers of the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights to make them impervious and impermeable.
And I don't think that that's something that Kamala really grasps.
What's your plan for the next ABC News debate scheduled in September? I'm sure
you've looked at the qualifications, any legal ways that you'd be able to get on the ballot,
perhaps by suing ABC. Have you been in contact? Tell us about that, because that possibly could
be even more important than the previous debate that we just saw. Yeah, I mean, we're hoping that
they let me on the debate stage this time. So, you know, I think I'm going to qualify by all the traditional.
I will be on the ballot in every state at that point.
And my poll numbers are good enough.
And if the Presidential Debating Commission, if they were still running it, I would definitely be on the stage. So, you know, I need to look at their criteria and how that was selected
and then, you know, make a decision about what to do.
Unfortunately, the FEC, Federal Election Commission, is a very weak agency.
It's unresponsive.
It's captured by the
political parties.
It is another
captured agency and the
parties it's supposed to regulate. Interestingly,
the Gallup poll
came out this week that showed that
independent voters
are now by far the
biggest political demographic
in our country. 51% of
Americans self-identify as independents.
Only 23% say they're Democrats.
25% say they're Republicans.
So you have these two minority parties who are running our whole political system.
And most Americans do not feel like those parties represent their interests.
I'm doing better among independents than either President Biden or President Trump.
And it's kind of a joke to say that those voices should not be represented on the national stage.
And I think we have to make that point. I'm grateful to you and to this show for giving me an alternative narrative that is, I think, the closest to the truth of what's happening in our political system right now, because the mainstream media is also, you know, has been captured by the Democratic.
Oh, we appreciate that, sir.
I mean, it's very obviously ridiculous, you know, not to have one of the highest polling independent candidates in decades not on the stage.
And I think it genuinely could have changed history.
Ryan Grim made that point on our show because you would have been the contrast to President Biden as opposed to just President Trump.
This does matter, though, in the ballot context. So as of six days ago, your campaign said you're
on the ballot in eight separate states. So you said you're going to be on the ballot in all,
or no, you have an account for only 138 electoral votes. That's currently. But you said just now
you're going to be on the ballot all 50 by September. Can you assure us of that? Because
as I understand it, there have been some ballot challenges and others. Tell us about that process
as it's arguably the biggest obstacle to your campaign right now. Yeah, I mean, people say
we're only about, I think, an eight or nine stage, which is true. But we have enough signatures to
get on the ballot in more than half the states already.
And they're all the hard states.
So the easy states that, you know, are the ones that are left, and we will be on all those ballots by the end of this month.
We're not going to be, let me edit that remark.
We won't be on the ballot because there are many of these states where the state will
not let you get on the ballot, there are many of these states where the state will not let you get
on the ballot, even if you have all the signatures. They won't process your application until the end
of August. I see. We have, in most states, we have two to three times the number of signatures that
we need. And these are not going to be susceptible to any authentic challenge. The DNC
is probably going to make frivolous challenges to us in every state. So far, we've won every single
one of those lawsuits. We have now a war chest to fight those lawsuits against the DNC, and we're
going to fight them all. But we will have all the ballot signatures that we need.
As I said, by the end of June or the end of July, I mean the end of June or the first week,
sorry, I'm getting mixed up about what month I am. I think it was in three weeks. By the third
week of July, we'll be on the ballot. We'll have enough signatures to get on the ballot in every
state. And this is critical because as I understand, this is part of the way that CNN excluded you
from the debate is even though you had the ballots to qualify, even though you technically
weren't on the ballot, they were saying that you didn't. Even though, as you pointed out,
President Biden and Trump, neither of them are officially on the ballot either
because neither of them have actually been nominated. So that was a real view, I think,
into the way that the current process is rigged. I'm curious on your fundraising numbers. Have you
seen a major increase? I believe your campaign just said you've raised, well, $46 million.
Currently about $10 million of that from your vice president. Can you give us any insight into
post-debate considering the amount of political interest that's spiked in this country since?
I honestly don't know the numbers.
I do know this, that on the day of the debate that we had a record day fundraising.
And I've heard, but I can't guarantee you this,
I've heard that the fundraising has been very, very good since the debate.
Okay. All right. And the other thing is that political parties can raise over a million dollars per donor,
and we're restricted to $6,600 per donor.
But because we are now on the ballot
for existing political parties,
the National Law Party,
the We the People Party,
it gives us now the capacity
to raise that limit to 47,
I think it's 47,000,
maybe $43,000 per donor.
So it allows us now to go back
to our donors and our maximum donors and tell them that
you know there's a new maximum and so I think our fundraising is gonna is gonna be fine all right
last question for you sir because I know that you're running on a short time Vanity Fair came
out with a major profile today I want to give you a chance to respond to this. There's a photo circulating, I believe,
of you posing with what looks like a dog
and also a barbecued dog.
I'm not going to show the picture.
As a dog lover, I know you have pets yourself.
And also a sexual assault allegation
from one of your former nannies.
So I want to give you a chance to respond to that.
Sorry. The article is a lot of garbage.
The picture that they said is of me eating a dog. It's actually me eating a goat in Patagonia
on a whitewater trip many years ago on the Fulayfu River, they say they have an expert that has identified that as a dog carcass.
Yeah.
It's just not true.
And in terms of the other allegations, listen, I have said this from the beginning.
I am not a church boy.
I am not running like that.
I said in my, I had a very, very rambunctious youth.
I said in my announcement speech that I have,
if I have so many skeletons in my closet,
that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.
So, you know, this Vanity Fair is recycling 30
year old stories. And I'm not going to comment on the details of any of them, but it's, you know,
I am who I am. You're talking there about the nanny situation. I mean, I do have to ask her,
I mean, are you denying it or not? I'm not going to comment on it. All right.
Well, I gave you the opportunity, and officially it's a goat.
I didn't know necessarily, but what did they say?
It's a spare rib of a canine?
I think that's what they said for their identification, but we've got it from you.
I'll let the anatomy experts be the ones who can determine that.
Sir, I very much appreciate you joining us for these questions.
It's been a big interview for us, and we wish to see you on all 50 ballots and including on the debate stage because that's what the American people deserve.
So thank you.
Thank you very much, Sager.
Absolutely. We'll be right back. is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son,
but I have DNA proof that could get the money back.
Hold up.
They could lose their family and millions of dollars?
Yep.
Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids,
promised extraordinary results.
But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.
Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.
Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. We'll be right back. making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.
I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still
out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call
678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.